Rare Ferrari crashes on I-95 in Stamford

Staff reports

Updated 10:28 pm, Monday, June 23, 2014

STAMFORD -- A New York man driving a rare Ferrari Enzo owned by a Cuban-born multimillionaire lost control of the $600,000-plus car while getting onto Interstate 95 at Exit 7 in Stamford on Monday morning.

The driver and passenger appear to be technicians for Miller Motorcars, the Greenwich-based ultra-luxury car dealership. The driver suffered a minor cut, and the passenger was unhurt.

Enzos are one of -- if not the -- most expensive of the Ferraris. Only about 399 of them were built, which can drive up the price to more than $2 million on the used car market. Even just a model of the car retails for more than $6,000 on the Ferrari online store.

The crash occurred Monday at 8:45 a.m. as the car was entering I-95 northbound at exit 7. The 650-horsepower car began to fishtail as it traveled up the northbound entrance ramp, struck a bridge wall on the right, spun around across all three lanes and smashed into the center divider. It slid along the Jersey barrier backward before stopping in the median facing south, Vance said.

The driver, Leonardo G. Garcia, 40, of New Rochelle, N.Y., suffered a minor cut to the right side of his head and was taken to Stamford Hospital, according to a state police report. He was issued a ticket for failing to drive in an established lane. The passenger, Daniel Palchik, 31, of Greenwich, was uninjured.

The Greenwich-based Miller Motorcars website lists a Leonardo Garcia as a Ferrari technician, and a Daniel Palchik as an Aston Martin technician. Palchik's work email address is listed on Lexis/Nexis as being a Miller Motorcars address.

A receptionist at Miller Motorcars initially hung up when an Advocate reporter called to inquire about the crash. In a subsequent call, the receptionist said she would check with her supervisor, and then said the dealership "had nothing to say" about the crash.

Miller Motorcars also has a dealership and shop on Magee Avenue in Stamford. Calls to that outlet were not answered.

The car's owner, Michael Fux, of New Jersey, is known as having revolutionized the mattresses industry with memory foam, and made much of his fortune with two companies he founded -- Sleep Innovations, and Comfort Revolution, according to Forbes magazine. He came to the United States from Cuba with his family as a child in 1958, settling in Newark, N.J., where they started with nothing, according to a 2012 profile of Fux in BedTimes, a mattress industry trade publication. Today Fux (pronounced "fyooks") is a philanthropist and a prominent exotic car collector who frequently shows his automobiles at the world's most prestigious car shows, including the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.

Named after the founder of the Ferrari supercar company in Italy, the Enzo is also one of the fastest Ferraris, with a top speed of 218 mph.